If you’re considering working with Wholeheart– whether for Monthly Marketing Services or our Complete Marketing Strategy Bundle– you should know how we approach our marketing and why we “do marketing” the way that we do.
We like to describe our methodology as “Purpose-driven inbound marketing” Let’s break down what that means.
Purpose-Driven Marketing with an Inbound Approach
What do you get when you combine purpose-driven marketing with inbound marketing methodology?
A powerful and meaningful strategy that uses high-quality content and messaging that reflects your brand’s values and purpose to stand out in the marketplace and attract like-minded consumers.
Purpose-Driven Marketing is all about putting your “why” at the forefront of your brand, messaging, and marketing efforts. It helps you attract conscious, ethically-driven consumers, foster trust and brand loyalty within that market, and amplify your brand’s positive impact.
Inbound Marketing is all about bringing customers to you through valuable content creation and strategic distribution. This includes creating content specific to each of your identified “buyer personas,” addressing their needs and pain points at each stage of their buying journey.
Now, let’s dive a bit deeper into these marketing methodologies and why they’re so effective.
Why Purpose-Driven Marketing?
Today’s consumers want to support brands with purpose– that is, a reason for being besides making a profit.
With access to more options than ever before, plus greater awareness of social and environmental issues and the role business plays in them, people want to support brands that aim to have a positive impact.
It doesn’t have to be a massive, world-wide impact (although that’s great, too). Having a positive impact on a local scale or for a specific group, issue, or community can go a long way in helping your brand stand out and foster brand loyalty.
40% of consumers seek purposeful brands and trust in brands to act in the best interest of society.
Globe Scan
Purpose-driven marketing takes a brand’s purpose– it’s “why”– and puts it at the heart of its marketing and communication efforts. Whether it’s through website copy, social media content, or blog articles, purpose-driven marketing ensures that the brand’s purpose is evident and amplified across channels.
Benefits of purpose-driven marketing include:
- Attract conscious, ethically-driven consumers
- Stand out from competitors
- Deepen emotional connection with customers
- Create loyal brand advocates who bring new business
- Attract strategic partnerships with shared audiences
- Demonstrate and amplify positive impact
As a purpose-driven inbound marketing agency, at Wholeheart we center our clients’ marketing strategy and campaigns around their “why.”
That’s not to say we don’t create sales-driven content or campaigns. Generating ROI for our clients is important to us. But we’ve learned– and the data shows– that consumers are more likely to support brands with purpose. Building that purpose into our clients’ messaging and campaigns makes for a warmer reception and ultimately, more effective marketing.
Why Inbound Marketing?
These days, “inbound marketing” might as well just be called marketing… or at least, marketing that works. That’s how prevalent it is.
Technology has changed the way we consume information and interact with brands. Traditional, or outbound, marketing typically involves disrupting consumers with unwanted advertisements. This was more effective in the old days, when consumers didn’t have as much control over the content they consumed.
But today, we have ad blockers and often have the option to pay for an ad-free experience. We’ve even developed something called ad blindness, where we barely even notice paid ads as we scroll down the page.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, attracts and nurtures audiences through high-quality content that is specific to their needs. Often, the audience is already searching for that content! This is what makes it inbound– the leads are coming in to you, rather than you having to go out and find them.
Benefits of inbound marketing include:
- Attract the right people with specific content
- Nurture leads throughout the sales funnel
- Demonstrate your expertise
- Develop trust over time
- Build a pipeline of qualified leads
- Provide ongoing value and support that keeps ‘em coming back for more
At Wholeheart, we use purpose-driven inbound marketing methodology to build effective strategies and campaigns. High-quality content creation and strategic distribution is at the heart of everything we do. It just so happens that our content has the double whammy of amplifying a company’s positive impact.
How Purpose-Driven Marketing and Inbound Marketing Come Together at Wholeheart
So now you’re familiar with purpose-driven marketing and inbound marketing. But how do we bring these distinct disciplines together at Wholeheart to create effective marketing campaigns?
No two clients are the same, so no two marketing strategies or campaigns are exactly the same. However, we do have a high-level process we follow with clients to ensure a smooth rollout of an ultimately effective marketing strategy.
Step 1: Identify Marketing Goals and Challenges
Perhaps an obvious place to start, but we want to hear about your greatest business and marketing goals and challenges, as you see them.
You might think most marketing needs boil down to the same thing (More leads! More followers!) but you would be surprised at the wide range of priorities expressed by our clients.
Some common marketing goals include:
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate high-quality leads
- Increase sales and/or conversions
- Nurture leads toward conversions
- Drive organic website traffic
- Develop social media presence
- Increase engagement on social
- Improve website SEO ranking
- Build an email list
These are just some of the marketing goals we help our clients identify and achieve.
We also like to learn about what challenges have gotten in the way. Are they internal or external? What has been tried already? What seems to be working? What is definitely not?
Learning about both your marketing goals and challenges allows us to map out a cohesive purpose-driven inbound marketing strategy that drives results in key areas while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. It also enables us to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) by which we’ll measure and determine the success of our marketing efforts.
Step 2: Internal Audits and Market Research
Our next step is to conduct thorough internal audits and external market research. This includes taking a close look at your company, as well as the market you operate in, to identify current strengths, weaknesses, resources, areas of opportunity, and low-hanging fruit we can maximize on to achieve some quick wins.
Assuming you’re not a brand new company, you probably have loads of data scattered across your various marketing channels. One of our first steps with new clients is to pull data from across channels like website, social media, email, and CRMs to gather useful insights and spot any potholes that we must consider as we craft your marketing strategy.
Areas we audit may include:
- Website analytics
- Social media engagement
- Email marketing
- Videos – watch-through rate
- Existing blog posts
- Internal materials
- Sales and CRM data
Often, we also interview members of your team or current/past customers to get various insights, perspectives, and ideas. The best ideas often come from the people who are already interacting with your audience and brand every day!
We also take time to research your industry, audience, and competitors so we are well equipped in both our strategy mapping and the content creation. This includes gathering information on our target demographics, as well as identifying the key players in our industry. By understanding the competitive landscape, we can position ourselves in a way that sets us apart from our rivals and highlights the advantages of choosing your company over the rest.
Step 3: Develop Purpose-Driven Inbound Marketing Strategy
Equipped with a solid understanding of your industry and audience, as well as useful insights and ideas from your team, we get to work developing your marketing strategy. The fun part!
This entails developing a detailed, structured plan of our marketing content and promotional efforts across platforms, channels, and content formats.
What goes into a purpose-driven inbound marketing strategy is another blog post altogether, but in general it will contain the following:
- Objectives and KPIs – What are we trying to achieve? How will we determine if we’re successful?
- Audience Segmentation – Who are our target audience groups? What do they care about? How do they differ?
- Brand messaging and positioning – What makes you different from the rest? What’s your “why” and how does that drive what you do as a business?
- Content strategy – What kind of content are we creating? What are the formats? The topics? How does our content align with the customer journey and sales funnel?
- Distribution strategy – How are we getting our content out there into the world? What channels are we focusing on? What do our distribution efforts look like?
As you can imagine, building out this foundational strategy is a critical part of your ongoing marketing success. It can be tempting to skip ahead to the next part, but we make sure to keep our clients on track and mindful of the bigger picture.
Step 4: Content Development
It’s tricky to take something as creative and ever-changing as content creation and turn it into a reliable process– but we’ve figured it out at Wholeheart!
As described above, the start of our partnership includes a deep-dive into your marketing goals, challenges, industry, and audience, along with your existing marketing channels and materials.
During the marketing strategy phase, we also dive into your content strategy, which includes defining content goals, pillars, as well as key formats and distribution channels. We use this strategy to guide our content development and ensure the content we create is aligned with identified marketing goals and audience interests.
Still, we like to meet with our clients each month to review past content and campaign performance, regroup on long-term goals and priorities, and connect on any new marketing priorities for the upcoming month.
Based on that call and our pre-identified content strategy, we then create a content calendar outlining the following month’s content across channels and formats. For example:
- Landing pages and/or website content
- Blog post content
- Email newsletters or campaigns
- Social media content (across various platforms)
- Video content (short- and long-form)
- Webinar calendars and topics
Not every content strategy will contain all of these elements. Rather, we identify and prioritize the formats and channels that work best for pre-identified goals and audiences.
Once content calendars are approved, we get to work on content production. Depending on the depth and complexity of content, this may be a collaborative process involving your team. Regardless, we’re sure to complete as much of the actual work as possible!
Once we deliver content, you have a chance to review, provide feedback, and request changes. Once content is approved, it’s scheduled out across the various channels so you can see exactly when and where it goes out, and get one final round of approval.
Step 5: Strategic Distribution
The best content in the world won’t do much good just sitting on your website or social media channels, so a big part of our marketing strategy is strategic distribution.
Your high-level distribution strategy is identified during the Marketing Strategy phase. Still, a bit of healthy experimentation is involved as we try out different channels and content formats to see what the audience is responding to most.
Often, we utilize paid social media advertising to help content reach new audiences across social through careful research, targeting, and analysis. This goes for social media content, as well as website pages, blog posts, landing pages, lead magnets, and other content formats.
Step 6: Measure, Report, Analyze, Evolve
Measuring and analyzing the performance results of a purpose-driven inbound marketing strategy is critical to long-term success.
By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), we can gain valuable insights into how your purpose-driven marketing strategy is performing and where there may be opportunities for improvement.
This data can be used to make informed decisions about how to optimize our marketing efforts and enhance the customer experience, ultimately leading to greater brand awareness, customer loyalty, and marketing success.
Additionally, measuring and analyzing the impact of purpose-driven marketing initiatives can help brands to stay accountable to their social and environmental responsibilities. By demonstrating a commitment to sustainability, ethical business practices, and social impact, brands can attract and retain customers who are increasingly conscious of the role that businesses play in shaping society and the environment.
Reporting on these initiatives can also help to build trust and credibility with customers, as well as with investors, stakeholders, and the wider community. As such, measuring, reporting, analyzing, and evolving a purpose-driven inbound marketing strategy is not only important for driving business results, but also for building a positive and impactful brand reputation.
Get Purpose-Driven Inbound Marketing Support with Wholeheart Agency
Want to learn more about working with Wholeheart Agency? We would love to help build out and manage your purpose-driven inbound marketing strategy.
Browse these links to learn more about us and your options for working with Wholeheart.
- Browse our Monthly Marketing Services, where we manage your marketing for you on a monthly basis.
- Check out our Complete Marketing Strategy Bundle, where we build out a custom marketing strategy for you to execute on yourself or in-house.
- Learn more about us, our team, purpose, and vision
- Contact us to get the conversation started! We’re happy to point you in the right direction or build out a custom marketing plan for you.